She explains that teen girls are ready to get pregnant and marry at fifteen or sixteen, and in the big Homes they do. But many teens in the Family live in small Homes, with few in their age range. With Homes spread out around the world, the teens are in a tough spot: they are taught to have sex, but they don’t have the chance to interact with many other Family members their age to find marriage partners.
This is the real reason the leadership has decided to create teen training centers, where teens can learn to be better soldiers for Jesus and meet other Family teens to find marriage partners, settle down, and be so busy having babies that they won’t have time to get into trouble.
Our Farm is going to be the grand experiment.
One of Auntie Sara’s main changes to our routine is the introduction of a rotating “sharing” schedule for us teens, like the adult sharing schedule. During our Get Outs, we have already been pairing off in boy-girl couples on Walkie Talkies, walks to get to know each other. Now, it’s time to take it to the next level.
In addition to finding marriage partners, we’re expected to have sex in our own age group, but not to get selfish or cliquish, like in the System high school movies we’ve seen at movie night, where the hot guy gets with only the hot girls. In the Family, everyone is supposed to share sex with each other, even if they are not attracted to the person.
Children twelve and under are exempt from participating, but the age lines are blurry and ever-changing. Now the adults are saying twelve is considered a teen. I’ve just turned eleven, but I’m put into the teen sharing schedule. Once a week our names are put on the bulletin board next to someone else’s, and after dinner, we are supposed to get into bed with them for an hour. They are called word dates. We’re told that we don’t have to have sex with the person we’re paired up with, but we all know it’s expected that we do something sexual. We’re not given condoms because if we get pregnant, it’s God’s will.
I’m a tough case. The Shepherds can’t pair me with my brothers, so there are few other teen boys they can put me with. At least that’s their excuse when I get put with Eddie, who, at fourteen, is one of the youngest teen boys, which is probably why I’m stuck with him.
After dinner, sweaty, chubby, annoying Eddie comes to my single bed in a room I share with five other teen girls, who are all away on their dates. We get under the covers, fully dressed. It’s no big deal, I can do this, I tell myself. I try to focus on the mechanics of it, ignoring my feelings of disgust. We talk about any old thing, trying to make this seem normal and not so embarrassing.
I hate his breath in my face, and I don’t want to kiss him. He is eager, though, and keeps talking. I can feel him pressing his hard-on against me through his pants. If only he would shut up, I might be able to do this. I remember the lessons my mother and Uncle Jeff taught me. I put my hand on the bulge, and he shuts up. He unzips his jeans and pulls it out, and I try to ignore any emotion about what I’m doing, while still figuring out how to do it.
I grip it and move my hand up and down, copying the motions I remember being shown. He starts making noises and adjusts my hand a few times. Okay. I make a mental note. It doesn’t take long, but it seems like forever before he grunts, and the sticky stuff comes out.
I jump up, grossed out. “I gotta go wash my hands,” I say as I make my escape to the bathroom.
I pray he’ll be gone when I return, and I take my time drying my hands. When I creep back in, I’m relieved to find that he left. Okay, I survived that, I think as I push away the feelings of revulsion and bury them down. It’s just because I think Eddie is gross, I tell myself. But tangled in my disgust, I have a sense of pride. I did what all the other teens are doing. I deserve to be with the older kids.
A year ago, I only cared about being faster, tougher, and smarter than my brothers, or at least keeping up with them. Now I’ll do anything to look and act like the older girls. I want the teen boys to notice me.
The girls brought cool clothes from other countries, like stretchy, short tube skirts and tube tops. How do they know that the yellow tube top will match the plaid shirt with the yellow stripe and the white stretch skirt? I try to take note of the different outfits and how they combine them to learn the secret.
I become a regular at the Free Store, the hot, stuffy room at the Farm where everyone throws all the clothes and things they don’t need. I pick through the castoffs and try to look sexy and cool but can never get it quite right. My tube top doesn’t look the same as it does on the other girls; it keeps slipping down because I barely have any boobs to hold it up. I need something to help.
I tell my mother that I’m getting breasts and need a bra now. She looks at the little swollen nubs under my T-shirt and tells me I don’t need one yet but promises to look. Why would I want a bra anyway? Her motto is “Come on ma, burn your bra!”—the title of another Mo Letter. I walk away, cheeks burning. I’m embarrassed to talk to my mother about these things, because I know she’ll tease me about them in public, thinking she’s so funny: “Oh, look at Faithy, she is getting little breasts!” Ugh.
I stand in front of the mirror and carefully catalog each feature on my face, trying to determine why I cannot get the teen girl “look.” Plain brown hair, brown eyes, straight nose, medium-size mouth, straight teeth, round cheeks. I realize that I am plain because each feature is boringly normal. Nothing stands out. Not like blue eyes or blond hair or a tipped-up button nose. Well, if I can’t compete on my looks, I’ll just have to act sexier. I practice walking with my hips swaying from side to side, like Grandpa talks about in the Letters. “A woman should walk like the pendulum on a clock,” he says.
My whole worth and acceptance into the teen group seems to hinge on being able to attract a guy. It doesn’t matter that I don’t really like any of them, and the few who are not repulsive are not interested in me. No matter how I try, I feel like the older teens are in a bubble, and even though I’m swimming as fast as I can, they just keep floating further away.
I miss the easy fun I had with Patrick, but he’s beneath me now in the kids’ group. Now that I’ve crossed the line into the teens’ world, we don’t mix. Unsure and self-conscious, I don’t fit in with either the kids or the teens.
My father is still not back from Japan. At first, we thought his trip was being extended by a few weeks, but then a few weeks turned into a few months, and then word started circulating that he might not come back at all. New Shepherds have arrived from WS and are running things. Aunt Faithy has been sent back to Latin America. The Shepherds tell us only what they think we need to know, and all our communication flows through them.